By Genma Holmes According to the 2025 Economic Report to the Governor of the State of Tennessee, prepared by the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research at UT’s Haslam School of Business, “The state’s agricultural and forestry industries directly and indirectly contributed $103 billion to the Tennessee economy,” says Andrew Muhammad, UTIA professor of agricultural economics. Decades before the annual reports were provided to Tennessee governors, Dr. Neal McAlpin, Sr., understood how the state’s agriculture influenced its economy from the ground up. McAlpin was a respected researcher, plant scientist, and horticulture specialist who taught at Tennessee State University from…
